Dr Karen Scott

I am a feminist, interdisciplinary social scientist based in the discipline of politics and part of the Environment and Sustainability Institute. My research interests focus on the politics of knowledge and epistemic injustice, particularly where it relates to issues of public or institutional policy. I've studied this across a number of intersecting areas including wellbeing, social inequality, and rural/environmental issues. I am a founder member of the Decolonising Knowledges Collective and the Environmental Justice research cluster in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Cornwall. I have worked in, and alongside, local and central government to improve evidence for public policy on wellbeing and sustainability issues across a number of policy areas. A large part of my work has focussed on studying the international interest in measuring wellbeing for public policy, particularly focussed on the UK and New Zealand. I am co-editor for the Palgrave MacMillan book series The Politics and Policy of Wellbeing and my publications include: Measuring Wellbeing: Towards Sustainability (Routledge 2012) and The Politics of Wellbeing: Theory, Policy and Practice (with Prof Ian Bache, Palgrave 2018). Related to this research, I teach undergraduate and masters courses in the Theory and Governance of The Good Life, Environmental Knowledge Controversies and The Politics of Knowledge and Ignorance.

I am happy to consider supervision of research projects in relation to any of my stated research interests.